Of the top 100 US newspapers, 47 ran editorials on President Donald Trump’s Syria airstrikes last week: 39 in favor, seven ambiguous and only one opposed to the military attack.

In other words, 83 percent of editorials on the Syria attack supported Trump’s bombing, 15 percent took an ambivalent position and 2 percent said the attack shouldn’t have happened. Polls showed the US public being much more split: Gallup (4/7–8/17) and ABC/Washington Post (4/7–9/17) each had 51 percent supporting the airstrikes and 40 percent opposed, while CBS (4/7–9/17) found 57 percent in favor and 36 percent opposed.

A list of the editorials with quotes showing support or opposition can be seen here. The list of the top 100 editorial boards in the country was taken from a 2016 Hill piece (10/5/16) on presidential election endorsements.

Eight out of the top ten newspapers by circulation backed the airstrikes; the Wall Street Journal (4/7/17), New York Times(4/7/17), USA Today(4/7/17), New York Daily News (4/8/17),Washington Post (4/7/17), New York Post(4/10/17),Chicago Sun-Times(4/7/17) andDenver Post (4/7/17) all supported the strikes with varying degrees of qualification and concern.

The San Jose Mercury News (4/7/17) and LA Times (4/8/17) were ambiguous, highlighting Trump’s past opposition to bombing Syria and insisting, in the Mercury News’ words, that he get “serious about setting policies and pursuing diplomacy.”

The one editorial that expressly opposed the attack, in the 15th-ranked Houston Chronicle (4/7/17), did so mainly on constitutional—not moral or geopolitical—grounds, writing, “As we said a year-and-a-half ago, the president cannot and should not use military force against Syria without a legislative framework.”

The Chronicle—like all of the editorials on the list—accepted the government of Bashar al-Assad’s guilt in the April 4 chemical attack on Khan Shaykhun, omitting qualifiers such as “alleged” or “accused.”

A consistent theme in the bulk of the editorials was that the airstrikes were necessary, but Trump needed a broader strategy as well as a constitutional or congressional “framework.” As FAIR (4/7/17) noted last week, the editorial and op-ed pages of top five newspapers in the country were uniformly in support of the airstrikes in the day after the attack, offering up 18 positive columns and zero critical.

Some spoke in emotional or visceral terms, most notably the New York Times (4/7/17), which insisted “it was hard not to feel some sense of emotional satisfaction” at the attack. “The US decision to launch cruise missiles at Syrian President Bashar Assad’s airfield felt good,“ the Denver Post (4/7/17) wrote.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (4/9/17) seemed giddy to the point of incoherence with Trump’s new tough-guy posture, publishing this string of NatSec bromides:

The message for the Russian and Chinese leaders must be to stop using their murderous little proxies, Syria and North Korea, to poke and prod us. We don’t want any more wars, but we also showed with the attack on the Syrian air base that we will not put up with being trifled with by their little friends doing awful things like killing children with chemical weapons and waving missiles around. Russia and China need to get busy and put the reins on the Syrians and the North Koreans, now. The game is lethal and dangerous, and there is no good reason for it to continue.

The overwhelming support for Trump’s Syria strikes—which open a whole new theater of potential war in the Middle East—is consistent with FAIR’s studies of media reaction to US military action. A 2003 FAIR survey (3/18/03) of television coverage in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, for example, found “just 6 percent of US sources were skeptics about the need for war. Just 3 of 393 sources were identified with anti-war activism.” As the US debated intervening in the civil war in Libya, pro-intervention op-eds outnumbered those opposed to or questioning intervention by 4-to-1 in the New York Times and Washington Post (Extra!, 5/11).

If there's a secret group and you know about them, are they really secret?

Posted by ELITISTDEFEATIST on 2017-04-16 19:18:40

An executive of a major media network was killed slowly in her garage after exiting her vehicle upon returning home from 'work.' In a metropolitan area in a country that has a corrupt, totalitarian, authoritarian-police-state for it's government. The same day in same city, a police officer was killed, not real slow, but not fast, in his driveway, as he got out of his car at 3:00am after he got off work. Earlier that afternoon and late morning, ten loved ones, associated with individuals above the rank of captain in the armed forces of the US Government were heinously tortured in their homes. They were the married spouses and children of soldiers that are killing civilians in Iraq and Afganistan so that a handful of rich miscreants that own/control the US Government can rob and plunder these countries for their benefit. On the same dayaround 10:00am in this same city a major communication center was 75% destroyed by one major explosion and two minor explosions. An hour before this occurence in this same city a major bridge collapsed over a major river that passes through this major metropolitan area and upon it entering the waters below, took out a lage commercial barge. Sometime in the late afternoonn a public school called the home of a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation trying to contact the parents of their missing nine year old boy. This was in the suburbs of that same city. That night a major freight trained derailed on the main high line tracks coming in and exiting this city, effectively shutting down and disrupting rail activities in a quarter of the entire nation. There were other incidents that occurred in this city on this day. The perpertrators were a small group of right-minded, citizens with value as human beings and that posses integrity, principles, and determination. History has proven that a determined minority, as little as 3-5% of a given population, can effect Revolution and defeat the most powerful enemy, even bankrupting them before defeating them militarily using guerilla warfare and counterinsurgency tactics, which are undefeatable backeg up with the proper amount of determination. These citizens merely dissappeared into the ranks of the citizenry. But, get this. Twelve and a half million of their compatriots performed these and other just deeds throughout the country on the same day. That's just one day. The masses have never effected Revolutions, contrary to popular misconceptions, it's always been the determined minority. The masses are lost-gone. Read about the Winter War in 1939-1940, where a handful of Finns on snow skis defeated the Soviet Army, the most powerful army in the world at that time. When the war ended there were over a million Sovirt soldiers dead and countless thousands of Soviet tanks and equipment destroyed. The Finns lost approximately 23,000 soldiers and only had their rifles and bullets, which they were constantly running low on. This was a scenario, and in this scenario, the good guys hadn't even got started yet!

Posted by Medieval on 2017-04-16 16:56:52

" just the same with ABC national broadcaster in Australia,not a mention of “alleged” or “accused"

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Posted by Taylor Crawford on 2017-04-15 12:07:19

I think the world over knows what group is behind the catastrophes in Middle East, and the war provoking in other countries. The fans of the US that get a pleasure from seeing people murdered, especially children sadly have a problem, but most know why certain puppets are put in as presidents,- especially ,--Trump.--- He doesn't care as long as HE is in the spot light. The secret group planned to destroy the Middle East with the help of US -Britain- NATO, now plan to attack Russia, Korea, China, because these countries refuse to follow the US of Israel.

Posted by cuja1 on 2017-04-15 09:56:46

just the same with ABC national broadcaster in Australia,not a mention of “alleged” or “accused.”